Feeling Serious About Web Scraping? Use Premium Proxies

A proxy could well be considered a gateway that stands between you and the internet. It separates end users from the websites they access. It comes with different levels of security, functionality, and privacy, in line with your needs or company policy.There are undoubtedly many different types of proxies, but our focus will come to residential and datacenter proxies.

Residential proxies are IP addresses provided by Internet Services Providers (ISPs) and assigned to homeowners. These are legitimate IP addresses, associated with a physical location. If you’re using these IPs as proxies, they provide a high anonymity level because from outside perspective they look just like other normal IP addresses.

What are Datacenter Proxies?

Datacenter proxies are popular, and a lot of people are using them every day. When you think of a proxy, it is the datacenter type that likely comes to mind. And you may not even know the specifics of how these proxies go about delivering their jobs; they do not come from an ISP.Having talked about these few proxies above, we can also classify them as shared, semi-dedicated, or private.

Shared proxies

Several people share these proxies, and they come with lower performance and speed. There is sharing of bandwidth, so the speed is slow.

Private Proxies

These proxies are exclusive for one individual. They are perfect for SEO, social media marketing, etc. They offer better performance and speed as they’re not shared.

Semi-dedicated Proxies

These proxies stand between shared and dedicated proxies – they’re not precisely shared or private. They work well enough for a group of 2-3 users.If you would like to learn more about proxies, be sure to check out this great article on Oxylabs blog.

What is Web Scraping?

Website administrators are mindful that scrapers are everywhere, and they put in place anti-scraping measures to deter people from scraping information off their sites.But that will not send a shiver down the spine of a serious scraper – all they do is improvise! With proxies in the picture, they can have their way. If you send multiple requests from different IPs, you’re likely to not be restricted. Your request is seen to be coming from real users.

With good proxy software, you will leave no information that would help identify you.

Why Use Proxies for Web Scraping?

The main benefits of using proxies for web scraping are:

Masking the IP address of the source machine

Overcoming the rate limit when you scrape for data

When you scrape, you’re sure to be restricted by a website administrator, based on the various anti-scraping measures. But you can counter these measures and have your way still. The target site will only see your request coming from the proxy machine’s IP address – they will have no idea of your scraping machine IP.

Again, you can also benefit from using web scraping in that it helps you get past rate limits. The big websites out there have software to track down a suspicious number of requests emanating from one IP address as it indicates that the access was through some automation.

The site will return an error message to block future requests when there’s a flood of demand in a short while.

To get around this problem, spread a large number of requests out evenly across several proxies too. What it does is that the target site will see several demands coming from the different proxy server IP addresses, and that will keep them under the rate limit. Your scraping program will carry on ingesting data from several requests at once.

Using Premium Proxies for Web Scraping

The internet is replete with different types of predators, and they’re patiently waiting for their prey to fall into their trap. But the advent of proxy servers has changed the game.

Aside from the fact that it protects you from cybercriminals, you can access a library of content online without any form of restriction. You even get to enjoy privacy.

However, you can only get these perks with PREMIUM PROXIES – they’re fast and reliable. These proxies work on protocols like HTTP (HTTPS) and SOCKS. For your next web scraping project, you might want to use premium proxies due to these reasons:

Private / Dedicated

Premium proxies are proxies for one single user. That increases their level of anonymity and makes them perfect for web scraping.

Speed

If you’re looking for speed when scraping data, then premium proxies are the best fit. They’re miles away from public proxies and make your web scraping tasks easier.

A lot of people are on public proxies, and that means they have to share bandwidth. It gets pretty congested, and speed is negatively impacted – the connection slows down.

Extensive Location Coverage

There is an array of locations to choose from when it comes to premium proxies. That gives you leverage! You’re less likely to be restricted because for each batch of requests you can get a new IP address.

Great Support

With premium proxies, you get dedicated account managers who will go the extra mile in making sure you have the best of experience using their services. Even when you run into problems, you’re sure to get it sorted out as quickly as possible.

If you’re serious about web scraping, then your best bet would be to go for premium proxies. You’ll use them without worrying about the problems associated with free or public proxies. You can now scrape with ease.

Abdullah is Founder of Worldfree and a passionate blogger.He loves new Gadgets and Tools. He generally covers Tech Tricks, Gadget Reviews, Games Reviews etc in his posts. Beside this, He also work as a SEO Analyst at Worldfree.